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Where did you first get this idea?
DAN GILROY:
A number of years
ago I was very interested in a crime
photographer from the 1930s and ‘40s
named Weegee (the pseudonym for
Ascher Fellig). He’s actually become
collectible among people who collect
photography. He was the first guy to put a
police scanner in his car, in New York City.
This was like 1940. He would drive around
and get to crime scenes before anyone.
He was a wonderful photographer, but I
couldn’t figure out a way to do a period
film, and so I put the idea aside and I
moved to Los Angeles. A few years ago
I heard about these people called ‘night-
crawlers’ who drive around Los Angeles
at night at 100 mph, with these scanners
going. As a screenwriter, I thought, ‘That’s
a really interesting world,’ but I didn’t
exactly know what to do with it. It was part
of an idea. For me, ideas come piecemeal;
they don’t come fully formed. That was
a part of the idea, and I didn’t know what
to do with until I thought of the character
to plug into it, which was Lou. Once that
character plugged into the world, it was like
two parts of an atom that fit together, and
suddenly it just made total sense to me,
and I knew what I wanted to do with the
world and the character.
Did you meet some of the real night-
crawlers?
Yes, Jake [Gyllenhaal] and I and Robert
Elswit, our DP, went out a couple of nights
with a guy named Howard Raishbrook,
who was our technical advisor, and it was
bloodcurdling. The first call we went to was
a horrific car crash, in which three girls had
been ejected from a car after hitting a wall
head on. I’ve got to be honest: I don’t think
I’ll ever get that image out of my head. I
think Jake and Robert and I were rather
stunned, watching it, but the gentleman
who filmed it very professionally got out
of the car, shot the footage, edited the
footage within five minutes, downloaded it,
and sold it to four television stations. Now,
the gentleman who does this, I don’t judge
him, and actually he’s become a friend of
mine. He and the other people who do this
very much see themselves as providing a
service, and they legitimately are providing
a service. In their minds, the stories that
they’re filming become the lead stories
on local Los Angeles news, so if there’s a
demand to watch this, who am I to judge
them? Or to say what they’re doing is
wrong? Obviously Lou’s character crosses
the line at certain points, and drifts into a
world that’s amoral, but I never wanted
to portray them or the news media or
even Lou’s character in that way. I never
wanted to put a moral label on it and say,
‘This is wrong.’ I think once a filmmaker
applies immorality to something, it stops
the viewers from being able to make a
decision for themselves. My morality might
be very different from yours, and what I
find important might be different from what
your priorities are. We wanted to create
as realistic a portrayal as possible of this
little niche market and the Los Angeles
media world, and let people decide for
themselves who the villain is and what the
issues are.
Where does the demand for this
coverage come from?
It comes from us because statistically,
as a race, humans seem to like to watch
things that are graphic and gory. It probably
goes back to Neanderthals watching a
lion kill a gazelle, and saying, ‘Oh, there’s
a bloody thing going on over there, that’s
interesting.’ We seem to respond to
watching violence. Maybe not all of us,
but a lot of people do. Look at the dilemma
that Rene [Russo]’s character is in as a
news director. Her ratings are based on
what she shows, and the more blood you
show, the more ratings you’re going to
get. I think my biggest hope, at the end
of the film, is that people might say, ‘I am
one of those people who watches those
things on TV. That doesn’t make me a bad
person, but what does that say about me?
Why am strangely connected with Lou?
Why do I find what he does interesting,
and why am I not walking out of the theatre
at this point? Because what he’s doing is
so reprehensible. We really don’t judge
him, and in fact, we go out of her way to
celebrate what he does, or to legitimise
what he does.
Has your own view on news changed
during the shooting?
No. My view before I started the film
and my view now is the same. I used to
be a journalist. I used to work for
Variety
,
a number of years ago, so I’m interested
in journalism, but I’m aware that in the
United States, a number of decades ago,
networks decided that news departments
had to make a profit, and historically they
did not have to make a profit. I feel that
once news departments are given the
task of making a profit, news becomes
entertainment, and I think we all lose
something enormously important when
that happened because rather than getting
in-depth stories that educate us and inform
us, we get narratives built to sell a product.
The narrative in Los Angeles, and I believe
the narrative you’ll find in most local TV
news, and Michael Moore touched on this
in
Bowling for Columbine
, is a narrative of
fear. It’s a very simple equation: if you’re
not watching the station you’re in peril,
because there are things outside that
could kill you and your family, and if you
don’t watch this, through the commercials,
you’re not going to know about it. It’s
a very powerful formula, and it’s very
effective. That’s what drives the whole
equation.
What should change?
It is such a big problem that there is no
solution to it that I can really see. To be
honest, I would not want to be the person
to put any moral barrier to what could be
shown. My only hope is that we should
be self-aware. As an example, when you
drive down a freeway in Los Angeles and
encounter a traffic jam, and you finally
with
DAN GILROY
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